Burberry to Schiaparelli: Designer Christmas Trees 2025 in London, Paris and Dubai

Somewhere between the invention of the electric garland and the age of Instagram, at some point the Christmas tree ceased to be simply a tree. It became a seasonal installation, an arena where luxury hotels and department stores clamor for our attention. This year, looking at London, Paris, and Dubai, one might get the impression that the traditional green branches are merely a pretext. The real theme is light, as interpreted by the greatest masters.

Let’s start with London, where tradition usually drinks tea with modernity, but this year, the two sit at completely different tables. At Claridge’s, a bastion of Britishness, Daniel Lee, creative director of Burberry, decided to look back. His tree is a study in texture and nostalgia, interpreted as “heritage” inflected by all manner of circumstances. The tree is adorned with bows made from leftover Burberry materials—a nod to sustainable luxury that still resonates proudly. It’s a vision almost Victorian in its coziness: wildflowers, thistles (Scotland’s national flower), and brass bells. At the base, instead of presents, rest oversized chess pieces. It’s a Christmas tree that invites you to sit in an armchair and read Dickens while sipping brandy—safe, warm, and unmistakably British.

Just a few streets away, in front of The Connaught hotel, the atmosphere thickens in a completely different way. Urs Fischer, a Swiss visual artist, doesn’t dwell on sentimentality. His ten-meter-tall Caucasian fir is not so much a tree as a platform created using AI technology. Instead of baubles, we have illuminated spheres enclosing digitally generated faces. Fischer describes his installation as “a portrait of togetherness,” but in the chilly London air, these LED faces, glowing with their own inner light, remind us that the contemporary community is increasingly digital. It’s a bold move to replace the Christmas angel with an algorithm, suggesting that the magic of Christmas in 2025 is a chain of connections, even if only fleeting ones like digital bits.

If London is intellectual, Paris remains theatrical. Under the famous dome of the Galeries Lafayette, a gigantic Christmas tree has been erected – as always – and this year it tells an even more fairytale story. Dressed in illustrations by Jeanne Detallante, the structure becomes the focal point of a spectacle of light and sound. This is no place for quiet contemplation: this year’s tree calls out “Joyeux Noël” every 30 minutes. The ribbons, the aesthetic Santa Claus figures, and the overall opulence are a reminder that for the French, luxury must be visible, audible, and stunning. The Galeries Lafayette Christmas tree represents 130 years of tradition transformed into a pop opera of the highest order.

In Dubai, however, we are in for a veritable explosion of extravagance, one that makes us question the boundaries of good taste, only to be immediately accepted. At the Mandarin Oriental Jumeira, Daniel Roseberry, creative director of Maison Schiaparelli, has created a work that evokes Christmas tree imagery solely due to its vertical orientation. It’s a true couture sculpture: 960 radiating gold rods, yet it’s not the gold that catches the eye. The heart of the installation—literally—is a mechanical heart pulsating within this stellar structure, adorned with nearly 1,500 Swarovski crystals, beating 60 beats per minute, the same rhythm as the human heart. The whole thing evokes Elsa Schiaparelli’s fascination with astronomy and her uncle, the famous astronomer. This is pure surrealism, where Schiaparelli’s “shocking pink” gives way to the beating red heart of the desert. This is luxury that lives, breathes, and, most importantly, makes no apologies for its ostentation.

This year’s installations tell us something important about ourselves. In London, we are either searching for our roots (Claridge’s) or a new definition of humanity (The Connaught). In Paris—like children—we want to continue to be entertained. And in Dubai? In Dubai, we want to touch the stars, even if they are made of metal, and feel a heartbeat, even a mechanical one. In each of these cases, light no longer serves merely to dispel the darkness of a winter night. It serves to tell stories about who we would be if budget were no object.